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Taxes. Medicare. Off-shore manufacturing. This list of Mitt Romney talking points is also a rundown of the areas in which whistleblower allegations have touched Romney’s personal and professional investments. In ways unique to this presidential race, whistleblower allegations of fraud have impacted Romney’s fortunes in at least three significant matters.

In 2007, within months of Romney launching his first White House bid, a whistleblower from inside UBS’ secretive private Swiss banking group came forward to the U.S. Department of Justice with critical information of a sweeping tax evasion scheme that would ultimately lead to the unmasking of 33,000 wealthy US citizens skirting U.S. tax laws through private Swiss bank accounts.

Romney’s family assets at that time included a Swiss bank account with UBS -- an account that was noted simply as a “money market” account on the 2007 disclosure form he filed with the Federal Election Commission without any mention that the account was in Switzerland. As a result of the UBS whistleblower’s revelations, many questions have been raised about why Romney had a Swiss bank account -- whether it was properly disclosed to the Internal Revenue Service and whether it was used to evade U.S. taxes.

UBS paid $780 million to defer its prosecution for aiding in tax evasion and disclosed information on thousands of secret accounts to the IRS in 2009 under a settlement agreement with the U.S.

U.S. citizens who failed to include income from their Swiss accounts on their returns or who failed to file the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (“FBAR”) faced a choice: Either roll the dice on getting prosecuted, or take advantage of the IRS’ partial amnesty program (the so-called “Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program”) to disclose previously unreported accounts and pay up. Thus far, $5 billion has been collected under the IRS voluntary disclosure program, and numerous individuals have been prosecuted.

Romney's UBS account in Switzerland, which held millions of dollars, was closed in 2010, according to the lawyer who manages Romney's blind trust. For various periods starting in 2009, the IRS offered reduced civil penalties and a diminished risk of criminal prosecution to those who voluntarily disclosed off-shore accounts that hadn't previously been reported to the IRS.

Romney has not released any FBAR forms or said whether he reported the Swiss account to the IRS during its active years.

Tainted Profits?

Romney’s business interests intersected with whistleblower fraud allegations well before his UBS tax woes, however. An early instance occurred in the mid-1990s when Damon Clinical Laboratories Inc., a medical testing company, paid the federal government a record $119 million to settle two whistleblower cases – including one brought by my firm, Phillips & Cohen LLP -- and a federal criminal fine.